Heroin and crack cocaine dealer from Rugby has been jailed

A heroin and crack cocaine dealer from Rugby has been jailed.

Tymias Harris had pleaded guilty to possessing heroin and crack cocaine shortly before the Coronavirus lockdown in March this year with intent to supply them.

Harris (27) of Steele Street, Rugby, was jailed for three years at Warwick Crown Court – with a consecutive one-month sentence for possessing a CS spray, which he also admitted.

Prosecutor Joshua Purser said that police enquiries into drug-dealing led them to an address in Steele Street, where Harris was suspected of being involved in a ‘county lines’ operation.

Officers were keeping the address under observation when they saw men in a blue Skoda being joined by Harris who arrived on a motorbike which he took to the rear of the property.

He returned from the back garden and went inside before he was seen putting plastic bags into the rear of the Skoda which then drove away.

The car was intercepted, and the driver has since been dealt with separately, said Mr Purser.

Harris was arrested, and when he was searched he had a can of CS spray, £60 in cash, with another £20 in his sock, two phones and a number of wraps of drugs.

Keys were seized from him, and the police then searched his home, where they found a bag containing wraps of drugs with a street value of around £2,500 and a further £685 in cash.

And on one of the phones were messages offering to supply heroin and crack, said Mr Purser.

Ian Speed, defending, said: “He was doing this to fund legal needs to do with his child. If he goes to prison he will lose contact with that child.

“He’s a lad that got himself into a problem and sought the wrong way out of it.”

Arguing for Harris to be given a suspended sentence, Mr Speed added: “I don’t think this is a young man that deserves to go to prison.”

But Judge Peter Cooke retorted: “Fortunately for the public it’s what I think, not what you think.”

And jailing Harris, Judge Cooke told him: “I am mindful of the fact that you are still a young man, and a lightly-convicted one.

“But I have heard nothing about this case that brings it down from the usual starting point of four-and-a-half years.

“If you take a decision, as you did, to deal heroin and crack, two drugs that have ruined more lives that Covid-19 has come close to ruining, you must go to prison.

“This was a conscious decision on how you were going to lead your life.”